


The Great Roots of Night

by lustmordred



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, M/M, Vampire Sex, Vampire Turning, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:20:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Will he love you still, do you think? If you’re a monster like those he hunts with such… determination and hatred? Or will he put a knife in you and watch you die and feel nothing because you’re not human anymore? What do you think, Sammy?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Roots of Night

A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.  
The great roots of night  
grow suddenly from your soul,  
and the things that hide in you come out again  
so that a blue and palled people,  
your newly born, takes nourishment.

  
_Pablo Neruda (The Light Wraps You)_   


 

Sam took a drink of his soda and made a face. The machine was out of Coke so he was drinking 7up, and not even regular old, non caffeinated, nasty ass 7up, but the diet kind made from all natural… whatever.

Dean was still at the bar, doing shots and talking shop and handguns with that asshole, Gordon Walker. Which was just fine and, Walker aside, not all that uncommon. The shots, anyway. Some people collected stamps and China dolls, Dean collected phone numbers and bottle caps.

“Beat the buzz kill out of me,” Sam muttered under his breath. He set his soda can down and ran a hand through his hair. He snorted amusement and tossed the car keys down on the desk next to the little list of take-out numbers, courtesy of the Adobe Court Motel. “My ass.”

An alive and heavy weight landed on his back and Sam tensed and started to turn toward it. Arms around his neck, tight and strong as bands of steel, closed over his throat and cut off his air, forcing a grunt from him. Sam jerked around and used his body weight behind his shoulder to throw his attacker off. He hit the guy and sensed movement behind him just in time to duck out of the way of a punch and deliver one of his own to a second man.

Something solid and heavy hit the back of his head and slammed him to the floor. There was a clang… or maybe it was a gun shot. He felt himself slipping into shades of grey and hoped to fucking god that whatever he’d been hit with had not been a bullet.

He blinked up at the man crouched over him, looking at him with strange, hungry eyes beneath a worn baseball cap, and watched in fascinated silence as his face blurred. “Fuck you,” he mumbled. Soft, amused laughter made him grit his teeth and try in vain to bring the bastard back into focus. “Fuck you,” he repeated in a low, pained whisper.

“We’ll see,” the man looking down at him said, smiling so broadly that even with his eyes blurring in and out of focus with darkness bleeding in, Sam could see his fangs peeking under his top lip. He lifted one hand and waved his fingers at Sam in a childish bye-bye gesture. “Nighty night, pretty boy.”

~~*~~

Sam came to with that same face looking back at him, those same half-mad, not human, frighteningly intelligent eyes watching him with calm patience. The man saw Sam looking back at him and bared his teeth, his sharper fangs sliding down over his blunter human teeth as he did. A soft, menacing growl rose in his throat as he leaned close.

“Get the hell away from me, fang face,” Sam said roughly, leaning as far away from him as he could manage while tied to the chair he was sitting in.

“Fang face,” the guy whispered, letting it roll with a hiss over his tongue. “I have never heard that one before, killer. That’s damn original.”

Sam coughed laughter and shook his head, trying to clear it. He was still a little faded around the edges from being smashed over the head. “ _Killer_? Coming from the likes of you, that’s ironic.”

The man stretched his neck out more, leaning in closer, and grinned when Sam drew back from him like he was a venomous serpent. “About as ironic as my pal, Conrad with his head in a basket,” he said, and Sam watched his pupils gleam like a wild animal’s in the dark when the light from the single dull lamp caught in them.

“Eli,” murmured a woman’s voice on Sam’s right. Sam slid his eyes toward her but didn’t dare turn his head. She glanced at him then calmly shifted her attention back to the other man. “Eli, stand back from him,” she said.

Eli ran his tongue over his top fangs and growled with his face entirely too close to Sam’s throat for comfort. Sam felt his pulse grow faster, thicker, and tried to shift away from him more, but he couldn’t. He looked at the woman in the doorway again to see if she would do anything, but her expression was calm and serene.

With a movement so quick, Sam couldn’t track it with his eyes, even had he not been disoriented from the earlier blow to his head, Eli was across the room and leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. Sam relaxed a little, only to tense again when the woman crossed to him and stood over him.

“I’m Lenore,” the woman said. She smiled a little at the cautious way Sam regarded her, flicking his eyes to Eli over her shoulder, then back. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to hurt you. We just need to talk.”

Sam snorted. “Talk? Yeah, okay, as long as Eli here doesn’t get hungry in the meantime and—”

“He won’t hurt you either, you have my word,” Lenore said.

“The word of a _vampire_ ,” Sam said.

“Yes,” Lenore agreed. “The word of a vampire.”

“And I’m supposed to trust that?” Sam said, raising his eyebrows. “Yeah right.”

“We’re not like others,” Lenore said. “We don’t kill humans and we don’t feed on them. We haven’t for a long time.”

Sam gave her a disbelieving look. “You’re joking.”

She smiled slowly and lifted one dark brow at him. “If you’ll notice, you’re still alive,” she said.

“I did notice that,” Sam said. He looked down at the ropes holding him to the chair, then back to her. “Why?”

Lenore rolled her eyes in exasperation and paced a little away from Sam, closer to Eli, and paced back. “I believe I just told you.”

“Okay, so if you don’t feed on humans, why aren’t you both starving?” Sam asked.

Lenore’s red lips quirked. “We have found other ways. Cattle.”

“You’re telling me—”

“It’s revolting, but it does allow us to survive, blend in,” she said. “Dead cattle, that is all, and no reason for your kind to come looking for mine.” She gave him a rueful half smile and exchanged a look with Eli. “It would seem that we are not as high up on the food chain as we once believed.”

“Why are you explaining all of this to _murderer_?” Eli snapped.

Lenore looked at him and her grey eyes narrowed with warning. “Eli, that’s enough.”

“They killed Conrad and now they _celebrate_ it—”

“I said that is _enough_ ,” Lenore hissed.

“Yeah, Eli, that’s enough,” Sam said, taunting him.

Eli snarled at him and Sam grinned back.

“Leave,” Lenore commanded, throwing her arm out toward the door and pointing. “Now. Leave us.”

Eli pushed away from the wall and crossed the room. He snapped his teeth at Sam when he passed, slamming the door as he left.

“We are leaving this place,” Lenore said, calm again now that Eli was gone. “Tonight.”

“Then why…? Why did you even bring me here?” Sam demanded.

Lenore laughed softly and shifted closer to him. She cocked her head and dropped a hand to run a sleek, blood red nail down his cheek. Sam instinctively flinched away, the hair on the back of his neck standing up and his heart racing in alarm.

“Because I know your kind,” Lenore murmured. “All too well. You will not stop. You will chase us to the next town, the next city and the next. You will hunt us down like vermin and kill us all if you can. One by one or all at once. Exterminate us because that’s what you are; hunters. And having been a hunter, not so very unlike you—or your brother—once upon a time, I know. You hunt for sport, not for food, but we’re not so very different.”

She let her nails trail down Sam’s throat, fingertips brushing over the hollow where his pulse throbbed under his skin. Her eyelashes fluttered as she felt his blood pounding against her fingertip.

Sam swallowed and felt her fingernail pressing as his throat moved, tasted his own blood beating on the back of his tongue, the bitter tang that was part adrenaline, but mostly animalistic fear. The kind a rabbit felt when confronted with the golden eyes and hungry jaws of a wolf. “So you’re asking us not to follow you?” he asked.

Lenore smiled slowly, lips drawing back as her fangs descended. “Something like that, yes,” she said. “We hurt no one. We don’t _want_ to hurt anyone. We want to live, and have as much right to that as you do, hunter.”

“You don’t want to hurt anyone,” Sam repeated. “Then prove it. Let me go.”

Lenore leaned down and stretched her neck out, her eyes locked with Sam’s, her breath soft on his face. “Fine,” she said, and Sam felt the rope on his left wrist jerk as she cut it with a knife she had palmed from somewhere. She cut the rope from his other wrist and smiled when he tried to stand, running the very tip of the blade up his right forearm and back down.

Sam pressed himself back against the chair as much as he was able and tried to keep his breathing even. It wasn’t working that well and from the predatory gleam in Lenore’s eyes, he was sure she sensed it and knew exactly why. “I thought…” He swallowed and ran his tongue over his bottom lip, his mouth suddenly dry. “I thought you don’t feed on humans,” he whispered roughly. “I thought…”

“I’m not thinking of _eating_ you, silly boy,” Lenore said softly. She watched Sam’s tongue as he ran it nervously over his lip again. She flicked her own tongue out over his lip, catching the tip of his tongue with a lick just as he drew it back into his mouth.

Sudden understanding sent a thrill of awareness through him and Sam’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said. “Ah… Look, lady, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. What you’re thinking.”

“And what exactly am I thinking, _Sammy_?” she whispered, her mouth so close to his that he could feel her breath on his tongue.

“Don’t call me that,” Sam said automatically, but there was very little conviction in it.

“Sam,” Lenore corrected. She dropped one hand to Sam’s thigh and pushed it up, over his hip, his stomach, under his shirt and up his chest. “You were saying?”

“Bad idea,” Sam said through gritted teeth. He pressed back against the back of the chair and reached down to push at her hand. He got it out of his shirt, but Lenore merely changed direction, flicked the top button of his fly open and dragged the zipper down. “Bad, bad idea,” Sam said, pushing at her arms.

“Yes, it very likely is,” Lenore agreed. She knelt in front of him and ran both palms up the insides of his thighs, watching his face intently. “Tell me, Sam… tell me to stop.”

Sam sucked a breath in through his teeth, braced his hands on the seat of the chair, and slid down in it. Her hands pushed over his groin, the balls of her palms pressing in, sending a shock of pleasure through his stomach. “Stop,” Sam panted. His fingers closed tight on the edge of the seat and he rolled his hips up into the touch of her hands. “Stop.”

Smiling knowingly, Lenore grazed her fingernails up over his stomach. She pushed his shirt up and made a low murmuring sound of want when the muscles of his belly shivered under her hands. “Now say that like you _really mean it_.”

Sam let himself slip down farther, then slide from the chair to the floor with her. He shoved her hands away and she made a soft sound of protest, then one of surprise when he pushed her onto her back and climbed over her.

“Is this why you brought me here?” Sam whispered, his mouth a few short inches from hers. “Is this the _real_ reason?”

Lenore laughed and lifted up to lick his mouth. “So much trouble to bring you here for _this_? Do I seem so desperate? I need to… kidnap my lovers?” She laughed again and threw her weight to the side, rolling Sam onto his back beneath her. “No. That is not _why_. I told you why.”

Sam tried to roll her back under him, but she was stronger than he was and she straddled his waist and held him down. “To prove how kind and caring and… innocent you are, yeah. I heard you. Don’t know if I really believe it though.”

Lenore grinned and shifted, moving down to sit on his thighs so she could slide her hands inside the fly of his jeans. “I never said anything about innocence, Sam,” she murmured, pushing his jeans down his hips. “I’m much, much too old.”

Sam caught his breath and tried to thrust into the touch of her hands, but her weight on his thighs mostly prevented it. “How old is too old?” he asked.

Lenore shook her head and slid back up his body, taking her hands from inside his pants so she could pull his shirt up. Sam sat up a little so she could take it off. “Old,” she said simply.

He smiled a little and ran his hands up her back, under her shirt. “Thanks for clearing that up,” he said, and pulled her shirt over her head. He tossed it aside and unhooked her bra with a quick flick of his fingers, then trailed his fingers down her back, in the dip of her spine.

Lenore smiled faintly and arched her back into the touch of his hand as she sat back to take her bra off. “You’re welcome,” she murmured, amused.

Sam sat up and shoved Lenore onto her back. He was well aware that she allowed it or he would not have been able to budge her and that made him smile for some reason. He licked her belly just above the fastening of her jeans and reached down to take her shoes off. They were laced and he yanked them free and then pulled them off.

Lenore held his arms, fingers digging in as Sam licked over her belly button. She made a soft sound of amusement just short of laughter when she felt the button of her fly open under his mouth. He caught the tab of her zipper in his teeth and she lifted her hips up as he drew it down.

She started to move her hands from his arms, down his back, but Sam shook his head and pushed her hands away. He cupped one of her hips in his hand and turned her over onto her stomach. Lenore sat back on her knees and Sam pushed her back down on her hands. He felt her tense under him with the desire to throw him off and nipped the back of her neck, breathing in the soft flower scent of her dark hair. She relaxed slightly, only to tense again when he jerked her pants down. He sat up on his knees and hooked his fingers into the back of her jeans as he tugged, her ass gently hitting against his groin every time he pulled, making them both breathe a little harsher.

With a soft, moaning sound of frustration, Lenore reached back and pushed at his chest until Sam sat back enough for her to wriggle out of her jeans. She twisted out from under him and kicked them off, then pushed him back down on the floor and pulled at his pants.

Sam watched her, reclined back on the floor on his elbows and pushed his shoes off with his toes. She looked down at his feet as he did that, then back at his face. He lifted his brows at her, teasing and she smirked before yanking his jeans and boxers the rest of the way off.

“Not going for gentle then, are we?” Sam said.

Lenore shook her head, hooked one finger in the waist of her panties and rolled her hips from side to side, working them down as she crawled up Sam’s body. “No, I don’t think so.”

Sam shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said, and grasped her hips and pulled her down on top of him.

Lenore caught herself with her hands on the floor on either side of Sam’s head and shook her head back, tossing her wavy black hair out of her eyes to look at him. She licked down Sam’s throat, moving her hips in a slow grind as he pulled her down and pushed up against her. Sam nudged the side of her neck, ran his hands up her back then dragged them back down and thought of rolling her under him again.

Sam moaned and caught her mouth with his, sliding his tongue over her sharp teeth until she moaned too, the sound muffled on his tongue. Lenore licked over the roof of his mouth and grazed her teeth along the curve of his bottom lip, pleased when Sam stilled for a moment, aware of her monster’s teeth so close to piercing him. When he ignored it and broke his mouth away from hers, panting against her shoulder, she laughed softly and lowered her hands to his waist, holding on and feeling the slide of muscle under her fingertips as she slowly pushed herself down on his cock.

Sam caught his breath and thrust up, holding her hips tightly as he did, jarring her body and forcing a sharp gasping cry from her throat. He smiled a little, pleased with himself, and did it again. She laughed back and tossed her head, her demon eyes flashing in the dark as she looked down at him and began to move. Her lithe body moved in a deeply grinding undulation, her back arching into each thrust, hips rocking over him, hair a black waterfall down her back. Her body contracted around his cock as she lifted up, pulling at him with her internal muscles and relaxed when she slid back down. She was doing it intentionally and though he liked it—liked it a lot—it was making everything happen faster than he wanted. Too fast.

Sam slipped one hand into the back of her hair and closed it, pulling her head back. He thrust up into her, catching her by surprise as she was tight with contraction and forced a cry from her. With a pleased grin, Sam lifted up to lick her throat, mimicking her. He growled softly and ran his teeth over her pulse and Lenore gasped and locked gazes with him.

“Careful, hunter,” Lenore whispered, and shoved him back down on the floor. She lowered herself on him, her stomach sliding over his as she worked her hips, soft hitching gasps in her throat as her breath came faster, her cool, pale skin lightly flushed and shivery.

Sam shook his head and moved one of his hands from her hip, up her back to hold her. He slid the other over her thigh, fingers caressing the tensing muscles as Lenore rode him, up the inside of her thigh to her clit. He pressed his thumb there and rolled it a little, watching her as she caught her breath and sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Teasingly, he moved his hand a little away, fingers lightly brushing through her pubic hair, over the base of his own cock. He pressed a finger there and thrust up into her hard, a half-swallowed moan falling from her mouth, her body tightening once involuntarily in pleasure.

“You be careful, vampire,” Sam murmured. He pushed his middle finger inside her beside his cock and thrust. He could feel it, pressing the length of his cock as he moved and she moved with him, sliding inside her, pressing.

A low, vibrating, nearly inaudible growl started in Lenore’s throat and she dropped her head to lick Sam’s mouth. She grazed her teeth over his lips, down his chin, her hips moving in a deep, fluid motion, riding Sam’s steady rhythm. She nipped his collar bone lightly, not breaking the skin, but leaving a light pink mark behind.

“I’m going to bite you, hunter, what do you think of that?” Lenore whispered, flicking her tongue into the hollow of his throat, tasting his sweat. “Steal your heartbeat and give you my coldness. What do you think? Will you stop me? _Kill_ me if you can?”

Sam made a soft barking sound of laughter and rocked up, hips snapping as he moved inside her hard and fast. He tossed his head back, throwing his shaggy, sweat damp hair back and watched her, panting softly. He pulled her mouth down to kiss her, his panting breath mingling with hers and smiled against her lips, his tongue caressing one of her fangs. “I don’t believe you,” he said roughly.

Lenore shook her head with an amused smirk and kissed him back. She slid her tongue into his mouth, over the back of his teeth much like he had done to her and bit his lip. Sam tensed and jerked under her, his fingers tightening on her skin. If she were human, there would have been bruises later, he thought vaguely.

“Tsk, tsk,” Lenore said, voice holding an edge of laughter beneath the thick growl of desire. She ran her tongue over her teeth, catching the little traces of his blood, and smiled down at him, watching his face as he understood what she had done, fear battling with very real and immediate pleasure. “I never lie, Sam,” she whispered, and ran her tongue down the vein along the side of his neck.

“Stop,” Sam panted. He tried to throw her off, but she was strong, god she was so strong and he was exhausted. Sweaty and shivering, his body trembling with impending orgasm, she held him down easily. “Don’t, oh fuck, don’t do that. Get… off of me.”

“Mmm… no,” Lenore said, purring it a little. She growled and drew her lips back from her teeth, fangs descending as she nuzzled the side of Sam’s neck, just below his ear. Still growling, low and soft, she slowly sank her teeth into the side of his neck near the curve of his shoulder.

“Liar,” Sam managed. His hands were against the base of her spine, fingers moving a little every time Lenore drew blood from him, fucking him in time to the deep drawing tugs of her mouth. “You said… You _said_ …”

“That we do not feed on you,” Lenore agreed, sitting back a bit, licking his blood from her lips with a pleased smile. “That is no lie, Sam.”

She leaned down once again to kiss him and Sam turned his face away. Patiently, Lenore grasped his chin and forced his head around. She hunched her shoulders, back slightly bowed as she began to move faster, a little harder. Her smile broadened at the soft, desperate sounds Sam made, the way he couldn’t help himself and had to thrust up to meet her.

“Liar,” Sam repeated. He moaned and snapped his hips up, panting and shaking as pleasure built in his stomach, began reaching out. “Oh fuck,” he hissed, bucking under her. He slid his hands around, up her belly, over her ribs to hold her, thumbs touching below her breasts. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he said in a grating, harsh growl, and twisted his fingers in Lenore’s hair, jerking her head down so he could kiss her.

Lenore laughed into his mouth and bit his top lip, then bottom one, and pressed her mouth against his more firmly, deeper. Shocks of pleasure licked through her belly, up her back and reached out to her fingertips. She bit her own lip, making it bleed, and licked inside Sam’s mouth, tasting both her own and his together on their tongues.

“Make you a thing like those you fear,” Lenore whispered in Sam’s ear. She felt him shiver as her breath puffed over his sweaty skin and smiled, then sank her teeth into his shoulder again as her orgasm slammed into her almost violently and she cried out.

Sam felt her voice throbbing against his skin, his heart racing and blood burning with the venom of her bite. He cried out, partly in anger and finally threw her over and moved over her. With a low, angry sound, he gripped her hips in his hands and tilted her up and back as he thrust into her hard and fast, his breath panting and rough, teeth gritted. He could feel the cold trickle of his blood sliding down his arm from the bite on his shoulder and it only angered him more.

Lenore put her hands out on the floor on either side of her hips to brace herself and snarled at him, meeting him thrust for thrust without hesitation, her eyes blazing. Sam met her feral eyes and watched her, drawing short little animalistic cries from her throat as he fucked her through the last shocks of her orgasm and did not stop. The muscles of his shoulders slid under his skin as he dropped his head to nip her mouth and he laughed a little when she lifted one hand to run it up his back and hold onto him. He could feel his heart faltering and at the same time, still pounding like thunderclaps in his ears as he moved harder, faster, rough in a way that would have been painful to most humans. Lenore merely rose to meet him and drew her nails down his back.

Sam dug his fingers into her hips and slammed into her with a shout as he came. He gritted his teeth and kept moving, trembling lightly as he fucked her through that too, through every shiver and pulse of his orgasm. He moaned with his mouth pressed to the curve of her shoulder, licked her there, then sank his blunt human teeth into her skin and cried out. She drew in a hiss through her teeth and he tasted her blood, thicker than the blood of her kiss and moaned, the sound humming deep in his chest.

Sam ran his tongue over the bite, licking it clean and watching as it healed closed in moments. He nipped the curve of her jaw in a little biting kiss, then rolled off of her onto his back. “You have no idea what I fear,” he whispered to her, panting as he tried to even his breathing. “None.”

Lenore smiled enigmatically and got up, snatching up her clothes as she rose to her feet. “Perhaps not. Perhaps… being what I am is not so frightening to you. But…”

“Dean,” Sam said, closing his eyes with a heavy sigh as he thought about it.

Lenore put her jeans on and fastened them. “Ah yes… Dean. Your dear, beloved big brother who hates us so. More than you do.” She pulled her shirt back on and leaned down to look Sam in the eyes. “Will he love you still, do you think? If you’re a monster like those he hunts with such… determination and hatred? Or will he put a knife in you and watch you die and feel nothing because you’re not _human_ anymore? What do you think, _Sammy_?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. He put his arms around his waist and groaned as pain ran through him like barbed fingers of steel.

“You’re changing,” Lenore murmured, standing back up. She went to the door and opened it. “I’ll leave you to it then. Eli will take you back later and I suppose you’ll find out then. Find out… how thick blood can be… or how thin.”

“Riddles,” Sam muttered, then cursed as another cramp, twice as violent as the first, made his body clench in pain.

~~*~~

Eli dropped Sam off—quite literally—a block from the Adobe Court Motel. Grumbling angrily to himself, Sam climbed out of the roadside ditch, brushed himself off and walked the rest of the way.

His mouth tasted like cat blood and Lenore had been right when she told him it was disgusting, but it _had_ fed him. It was a lot like eating a cheese burger popping with mites and crawling with maggots, but yes, it was sustenance.

He was still trying to decide if the cat qualified as his last meal or, in some bizarre way, his first.

“I need a drink,” Sam muttered. The irony of that hit him and he snorted laughter. “A big one.”

The light in their motel room was on when Sam got there, so Dean had come back. Sam paused outside for a few minutes and just stared at the door, thinking about how he was going to tell Dean something like this. Or really, _if_ he was going to. He could always walk away now. Leave, disappear. Dean would think he was dead and maybe that was better. Or maybe not, because not knowing what had happened, or why, or how would eat at him and Dean would search for answers. He would go looking, and at the end of his quest, he would find Sam. There was no one better at not being found when they didn’t want to be found than a hunter, so Sam could hide, but for how long? Because there was also no one better at finding the things that didn’t want to be found than a hunter, and by then… by then Dean would know and it would be too late for Sam to explain anything to him. It might be too late from the get go, but maybe not. Maybe if he tried now, he could show Dean that there _were_ spots of grey, even in their world. That the things that went bump in the night weren’t always evil.

That sometimes they chose to eat cats instead of little children.

Sam licked his lips and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. The residual taste of animal blood still lingered on his tongue and he desperately wanted his tooth brush.

He sighed, opened the door and went inside.

Dean was sitting at the table by the door with Gordon Walker. Sam looked at Gordon and frowned, annoyed. He knew the man was a vampire hunter and that fact now placed Sam squarely under his radar, but he couldn’t really bring himself to give much of a shit at the moment.

“Where were you?” Dean asked, turning around in his chair to look at him.

Sam shifted his eyes to his brother and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face. “Can I talk to you alone?” Sam asked, jerking his head to the side to indicate the door. “Please?”

Dean lifted a brow at him and looked Sam over thoughtfully. He was a little ragged looking, his clothes dirty, his hair a tangled mess that would not stay out of his face no matter how many times he dragged his fingers through it. He looked anxious, alive with nervous energy.

“Sure,” Dean said. “Give us a few minutes, alright?” he said to Gordon.

Gordon lifted a shoulder in a negligent half shrug. “No problem.”

Dean got up and opened the door, holding it open for Sam. “Ladies first.”

Sam gave him a flat look and walked by him. “Uh-huh.”

“So, what’s up?” Dean asked after he closed the door. He followed Sam down the steps onto the gravel. “Where’d you go?”

“Out for a Coke,” Sam said dryly. “And a walk. A damn weird walk.”

“What are you talking about, Sammy?” Dean said. “What happened?”

“Well you see… there was this vampire…” Sam said, lips twitching a little in amusement.

“What?” Dean halted and stared at Sam. “What vampire? Where _were_ you?”

“In the nest,” Sam said simply.

“You found it?” Dean asked, a note of excitement in his voice. “Where is it? How’d you escape? How many did you kill?”

“Whoa,” Sam said, holding up a hand. “I don’t know where it is exactly. We went over a bridge, I remember that. I’d have to look at a map. And I didn’t kill any and I didn’t escape.”

Dean narrowed his eyes on Sam and frowned. “Then what the hell happened? They didn’t just let you go.”

“Yeah, actually they did,” Sam said. At the disbelieving look Dean gave him, Sam held his arms out and let them drop. “This time it’s different, Dean. They don’t kill people. They’re not evil.”

“Yeah, right,” Dean said slowly. “If they don’t kill people, how do they survive, huh? Tell me that.”

“Cattle,” Sam said. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth and grimaced. “Mostly. Sometimes other animals. Stray cats and dogs.”

Dean gave him and incredulous look and shook his head. “They told you that? And you believed it?”

Sam looked at him through his disheveled hair and shrugged. “Yeah.”

Dean stared at him quietly for a minute, looking Sam over and taking in the spots of dried blood with the dirt and mud streaks on his clothes and face, thinking about vampires that fed on Holsteins and Labradors. It made no sense at all. It went against everything he had ever been taught about the creatures, against everything he had learned while hunting them. They fed on human blood to stay alive and they didn’t care if they killed to get it. They were monsters.

“No,” Dean said at last. “No. They let you go. I don’t really care why, but they did. We hunt them down and kill them all, end of discussion.”

“Oh really?” Sam caught Dean’s arm as he started to walk by him and Dean jerked around as he pulled it out of his grasp. “Why?” Sam asked.

“Because they’re _vampires_ ,” Dean snapped. “What part of that is somehow hard for you to grasp all of a sudden?”

“The part where we go charging off like crusaders to kill things that aren’t hurting _anyone_ ,” Sam said.

“That’s what we do, Sam,” Dean said. “We find the bad thing, we kill it. That’s our job. That doesn’t change.”

“The bad thing,” Sam mused. “So what, we’re judge, jury and executioner now? _Why_? If they’re not hurting people, then why, Dean?”

“Of course they’re hurting people, that’s what _they_ do,” Dean said. “They’re all the same.”

Sam made a frustrated sound in his throat and shook his head. “No, Dean. Not this time.”

“Look, Gordon’s been hunting these things for over a year now, and he says—”

“Why do I give a shit what that guy says?” Sam scoffed. “I don’t know him and neither do you.”

“He’s been hunting these things a long time, Sam, he knows,” Dean insisted.

“Yeah?” Sam studied Dean’s face and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t really think I want to know why you’re suddenly taking the words of some stranger like gospel,” he said after a moment. “What is he, Dean? Daddy figure or _something else_? Not yet, maybe. But maybe you’re thinking about it, huh? One more number and a handful of beer bottle caps?”

Dean locked eyes with Sam and he did not misunderstand what he was implying at all. He nodded thoughtfully and started to turn away, then suddenly changed his mind, whipped around and slammed his fist into the side of Sam’s face. Sam’s head snapped to the side as Dean’s knuckles hit cold flesh and Dean’s eyes went wide in shock.

Sam shook the blow off and ran his tongue over his bottom lip where he’d bit through it when Dean hit him. He tasted his own blood and a low, instinctive growl rose in his throat. He saw the understanding in Dean’s eyes and smiled slowly. “Black and white, right, Dean?” he whispered. “Just find the bad thing and kill it. Easy, right? Except… Except if that’s how it is, I’m the bad thing now, aren’t I?”

Dean shook his head, but he drew a knife and held it defensively in his fist, blade down. “No,” he whispered.

Sam glanced meaningfully at the knife and smirked. “Yeah? Wonder why I don’t think you really believe that.”

Dean looked down at the knife in his hand and blinked, staring at it like he didn’t know what it was or how it had got there. He looked back at Sam and slowly lowered it. “You were bitten,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “And turned. You going to kill me now too, Dean? Because I’m no longer human and we’re all the same, aren’t we? We’re all evil, because anything else would mean… What _would_ it mean?”

Dean swallowed thickly and shook his head again. “I… don’t know.”

Sam considered him for a little while then began backing away. “Alright,” he said calmly. “I’m just glad that wasn’t a gun.”

Dean looked down at the knife again, then back up at Sam, watching him slowly back away. “I… I wouldn’t shoot you, Sammy,” he said.

“Yeah, Dean, you would,” Sam said. “Because I’m the _bad thing_ , I’m not human, I’m a monster, I’m whatever it is you and I were both taught to hate and fear. Make yourself forget for a second—which is all it would take—that I’m your brother and you would.”

“No,” Dean said, shaking his head. He watched Sam retreating from him, backing away cautiously without turning his back on him and felt a pang of fear. “Sammy, wait.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Coming back here was a bad idea. It’s all different now, Dean. I’m the monster, you’re the hunter. Hunter and hunted. You chase me and I run away and we both try to be the one to kill the other first.”

“No,” Dean repeated, the pang of fear becoming a deep, urgent thrill. “No, Sammy, don’t go.”

Sam regarded him sadly and kept moving away, glancing quickly toward the trees. Toward safety, he realized.

“Sam, no,” Dean whispered. “Stay.”

“Why?” Sam asked. “So you can decide one night that your first instincts were right, that you should have killed me after all and kill me in my sleep later. Oh, wait, morning. One _morning_.” Sam bared his teeth and ran his tongue over his top ones, teasing one of his fangs with the tip until it poked out. “Vampires are nocturnal.”

“No, Sam, stay because…” Dean trailed off and looked between Sam and the knife in his hand. He lifted the blade and grasped it with his other hand, then yanked, slicing his palm open as he pulled it free. He lifted his hand and held it out to Sam, cupping it as it filled with his blood and overflowed down his arm, under his coat and over the leather, dripping with soft _pat, pat_ sounds on the dusty ground. “Because,” he said simply. “Just because. Stay with me, Sammy.”

Sam had stopped retreating as he watched Dean cut himself open with the knife. He stared with rapt attention at the bright, bright red of the blood flowing down Dean’s arm, through his fingers, dripping into the soil to be sucked up by the earth, staining it maroon. His eyes traveled up Dean’s arm to his throat and he watched the way Dean’s pulse beat, rapid and fluttery like the heartbeat of a flushed prey creature.

Sam started when he felt Dean’s other hand on his arm. He hadn’t realized he had moved at all, but he was right in front of Dean now, almost on top of him. He wondered, fleetingly, where the knife had gone, then forgot it as his eyes slid away from Dean’s throat to his face. Watching him closely, wary of any sudden movements that might mean danger, Sam slowly lowered his head to Dean’s cupped hand and tentatively licked his fingertips. When there was no sign of disgust on his brother’s face, Sam sucked the tips, then licked into the well of blood in his hand and drank.

Dean watched him with an unreadable look on his face. Part fear, but it was unclear of what and part desire. That last… was not so unclear.

Sam drank his hand empty and ran his tongue into the mouth of the wound, soothing it. Dean sucked in a hissing breath of pain through his teeth and Sam stopped. He caught Dean’s wrist in his hand and began walking him backwards toward the motel room. Dean didn’t resist him, but there was caution in his eyes. Something there that said he didn’t fully trust Sam not to lay him down on the worn coverlet of the motel bed and drain him dry like some kind of ferocious animal with no respect or care for anything beyond its next meal.

The sudden, low growl that rose in Sam’s throat as he used his body to push Dean back against the wall of the motel next to their room did nothing to ease his mind about that either. Dean went still against him, except for little uncontrollable shivers and the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

“Sammy?” Dean whispered.

“What?” Sam said, watching him and feeling on the door to their right for the knob.

“I didn’t shoot you, do me a favor and don’t fucking eat me, okay?” Dean said.

Sam twisted the doorknob, shoved the door open and lowered his head to lick just below Dean’s ear, chuckling softly as he shoved Dean into the room and kicked the door closed. “I can smell the want on you like perfume,” Sam said, voice a low hiss against Dean’s ear. He licked behind his ear and nipped his earlobe, smiling when Dean caught his breath and gave him a wide-eyed look of surprise. “I’m not going to eat you; I’m going to fuck you.”

Dean blinked at him, a bolt of shock and sudden desire shooting through his stomach, and tried to pull away from Sam. He wanted to put some distance between them, make Sam stop looking at him like that, touching him like that. If he could do that, then he could stop this. It was wrong and okay, maybe he’d thought about it a few times in the past. Or more than a few times. Some of them recently… Maybe he had, but it was still wrong and those were only thoughts, not actions. Dirty thoughts about his little brother fucking him until he couldn’t move. Until he didn’t _want_ to. Dirty, wrong thoughts about Sammy that he had no right to be thinking and fell squarely under the black portion of Dean’s black and white philosophy of things.

Then Sammy had to go and get himself bitten and turned by a vampire and grow some kind of dog-like sense of smell or sixth sense or whatever the goddamn fuck and decide that what Dean was thinking, what Dean was _craving_ , didn’t sound all that bad. In fact, the way Sam was tugging at his clothes and licking him seemed to suggest kind of strongly that he thought it was a damn fine idea.

But then Sam didn’t believe in black and white like he did and never had.

~~*~~

Dean’s attention went to his coat and shirt as Sam removed them and tossed them aside. He caught his breath and held onto Sam’s shoulder as Sam unfastened Dean’s belt with a sharp jerk, his fly with a few quick tugs of his fingers, and pushed his jeans down his hips, maneuvering Dean back toward the bed.

“That Gordon dude fucked off, it looks like,” Sam muttered, and shoved Dean down on the bed. “That was nice of him.”

Dean caught himself on the mattress on his elbows and blinked up at Sam, slightly dazed. “Ah… yeah. Real considerate guy. Look, Sammy—”

“Look at your hand,” Sam said. He pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the floor, then gestured to the hand Dean had cut open a few minutes earlier.

Dean looked down at it and squinted. “What the… Wow. It’s healed already.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He opened his own belt and moved to stand by the side of the bed between Dean’s legs as he unfastened the fly of his jeans. “It’s kind of cool. Like a… perk or something.”

“A perk to being a bloodsucking—”

“Yeah,” Sam said, and reached down to grasp Dean’s hips and flip him over onto his stomach.

“Sam, slow the fuck down, alright?” Dean said, pushing back against him, trying to stand back up.

Sam made a soft sound of amused negation in his throat and worked Dean’s pants and boxers down his thighs. He dropped his head to lick the small of his back, slide his tongue into the little dimpled indents above the swell of his ass, then nipped. Dean tensed and tried once again to get up.

“Sam—”

“Dean,” Sam replied, chiding. “Shut up.” He pulled Dean’s shoes off, dropped them, and yanked his pants off. He was naked on his knees on the bed now and Sam paused for a moment to look at him and consider. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Dean asked, turning his head to look at Sam over his shoulder.

“Unless you want me to stop,” Sam said. He scented the air and could still smell desire, stronger now than ever, but that didn’t mean Dean couldn’t still say no and mean it. “ _Do_ you want me to stop?”

Dean coughed laughter and turned back around, dropping his head between his shoulders and shaking it no. “No, Sammy. But you know that, don’t you?” he said. “Besides… it’s a little late for that.”

“No it isn’t,” Sam said, running his hands slowly up and down the outside of Dean’s thighs. He urged Dean up on the bed further and crawled up on the mattress behind him, licking up his spine with lingering swipes as he got him closer to the middle of the bed. “Not too late to say no and mean it, Dean,” he whispered against the back of Dean’s ear.

“Yes, it is,” Dean said, and pushed back against him.

Sam set his teeth lightly against the back of Dean’s neck as he pushed his jeans and underwear down his hips. He wrapped his fingers around his own cock and pulled gently, working his fingers up and down it until precome beaded at the head and he could slick it over himself. Dean tried to sit up and turn around to see what he was doing, but Sam put his other hand flat in the middle of his back and pushed him back down on his elbows. He moaned and rolled his hips, grinding against Dean’s ass as he thrust into his own hand. Dean tensed at the slick slide of Sam’s cock in the crack of his ass, but didn’t try to move away.

“Shhh, this is probably going to hurt a little,” Sam told him.

That was the only warning Dean got before Sam pushed two slick fingers inside his ass and thrust them deep, twisting to coat the inside of his hole with precome. Dean closed his fingers in the sheets and ducked his head, shoulders hunching as he rocked, moving instinctively away from Sam’s probing hand. He gritted his teeth against a cry of pain as Sam withdrew his fingers and did it again, opening and closing them a few times quickly, stretching him in a way that at once burned and formed a slow ache in his belly. When Sam curved his fingers and pressed them against his prostate, Dean jerked, cried out and thrust his ass back on Sam’s hand.

“Sam,” Dean said, a touch of a growl in his own voice now, “stop playing with me and do it or get the hell off me.”

Sam snorted in amusement and removed his fingers from Dean’s body to grasp his hips in both hands. “You should maybe relax a little,” he whispered and thrust into him with one quick, hard snap of his hips.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dean barked, shocked both by the sudden movement and the unaccustomed deep, almost painful fullness of the penetration. He moaned as Sam withdrew a little, only to throw his head back with a shout as Sam thrust back inside, the pounding echo of his thrust tearing the sound from Dean’s throat and making him tense. “Sam… Sammy… Jesus god, Sammy, ease up a bit, man. I’ve never…”

Sam licked the back of Dean’s neck and began working his hips, fucking him with short, hard jerks of his hips. His rhythm was hard and quick, near violent and it forced strained, hitching cries from Dean, sharp little panting almost moans that became more like desperate whining sounds at the end. “Never what?” Sam murmured, licking over the little vertebrae at the base of Dean’s skull.

Dean pulled at the sheets beneath him, dragging them down the bed on either side of his shoulders, his body jarring with each pounding thrust. He could feel the sweat on his lower back, the way Sam’s cool belly slid in it as he moved, the pulling way Sam’s cock caught on the muscles inside him despite his attempt at lubrication. All of it, every sensation, was new to him and, in a way, not. “Never… had sex from this… position before,” Dean managed. He reached back and grabbed at Sam’s arm. His fingers ran up the inside of Sam’s elbow, then Sam thrust and his hand fell away. “Never been fucked like a girl,” Dean said, and laughed breathlessly.

Sam grinned and angled his hips, searching for and finding Dean’s prostate on his next inward thrust. Dean cried out and pressed his face into the mattress, shivering and moaning as pleasure beat at him insistently with every thrust of Sam’s cock over that spot. “Not like a girl at all,” Sam whispered to him.

Sam licked the curve of Dean’s shoulder, tongue dipping into the bend there before sliding up to the hollow behind his ear, tracing the heavy beat of Dean’s pulse. “Want to bite you,” Sam murmured. He tilted Dean’s hips up and back and slammed into him, ripping a ragged scream from him that sent a thrill of pleasure through Sam’s belly, down his thighs. “Want to bite you,” he repeated, still fucking Dean in that fierce way that made him cry and scream. “Let me?”

With his face pressed into the mattress, Dean shook his head no. He pushed back on Sam’s cock as Sam thrust and the pleasure of that snapped through him and made him scream again, the sound only muffled a little in the bed clothes.

Sam licked and nipped the side of Dean’s neck, his pace steady and unrelenting. Dean’s body contracted around his cock and Sam growled and held his shoulder between his teeth. The desire, the _need_ , to bite down was so strong that his teeth were pressing down before he fully realized and Dean writhed under him, fighting between the consuming desire to come and the little pricks of Sam’s teeth in his skin. The flesh was not broken yet, but it so easily could be and he knew that. Even in his brilliant haze of pleasured desperation, he knew that Sam’s teeth could pierce him like his skin was silk under a needle if he wasn’t careful.

“Sam,” Dean whispered, panting and shaking. He braced his hands on the bed and pushed himself back into Sam’s next thrust and they both cried out. “Sam,” he repeated, and rolled his hips, testing.

Sam gasped and jerked against him, his hipbones pressing against Dean’s ass as he thrust. “Dean, please,” Sam said, a touch of a moan in his voice now. He trembled and licked down Dean’s spine, back up, over his shoulder blades. “Want to bite you,” he whispered, nuzzling into the back of Dean’s hair. “Want to taste you in my mouth while I feel your heartbeat here,” Sam said, and thrust his hips. “I can, you know. Feel every beat of your heart like this. Every breath you take. Every sound you make vibrates along my skin. It’s beautiful. Let me?”

Dean lifted his head a little and turned his face on the bed to watch Sam over his shoulder, panting and gasping, shoulders shaking with exertion. Sam thrust into him again and his breath hitched, pleasure rolling under his skin, along his nerves, right down to the tips of his fingers and toes as his orgasm crept through him. It started slow, building and then just seemed to flow, growing in intensity as it reached out.

Sam watched him and smiled faintly when Dean bucked under him, shoving his ass back against Sam’s hips. He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth as he came, his cries muffled, but only a little. They still sounded loud in the small motel room. Echoing so loud and so pretty.

Sam leaned over his shoulder and licked Dean’s mouth where he’d bit his lip, tasted his blood and growled. “Want to… bite you…” he panted, fucking Dean through his orgasm, forcing the last little spasms of aftershocks from him until he was spent. “Let me.”

Dean moaned, his body quivering all over, shaking and tense under Sam’s continued thrusts. Sam still thrust over his prostate and the sensitivity of that had Dean whimpering and squirming every time he did it.

“Let me,” Sam whispered again. “Say yes. Want to…”

Dean whined and nodded his head quickly before he could change his mind. Sam was the only reason he had to say no to such a thing and he knew it and now… now he was the reason he was saying yes. He could keep him like this, he knew. Any other way was uncertain. Any other way and he could lose him now.

Sam licked Dean’s mouth again, then lifted up a little and took one of his hands away from Dean’s hip, lifting it to his mouth. He pulled his lips back from his teeth as his sharp vampire fangs descended, and sank them into the underside of his own wrist. He tasted his own blood, thick with that familiar metallic tang and took his mouth away to hold his wrist to Dean’s lips. “Drink,” he said softly, licking the back of Dean’s shoulder as he watched him, waiting for him to do it.

Dean watched the blood smeared on Sam’s skin from his mouth, the way it beaded in the little holes his new razor sharp teeth had made and slid down the underside of his wrist to drip on the bed. Once again, he hesitated, then took a breath and pressed his mouth to Sam’s bleeding wrist.

Sam sank his teeth into the side of Dean’s neck the moment he touched his mouth to his wrist. Dean cried out and broke his mouth away from Sam’s wrist, but Sam fisted his other hand in the back of Dean’s hair and held him still as he brought his wrist back to his mouth. When Dean refused it this time, Sam growled around the flesh between his teeth and fucked into him as he sucked on it, blood that did not taste like copper to him anymore at all—human blood—sliding down his throat like melted sugar. Dean cried out, voice catching as Sam moved, his pace brutally violent, punishing, demanding.

“Drink,” Sam snapped, taking his mouth away from Dean’s neck long enough to give the order, then sinking his teeth into Dean’s shoulder to drink again. He pressed his wrist to Dean’s mouth until he could feel Dean’s teeth against it, his lips crushed against them.

With no real choice, Dean did as Sam demanded and drank. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. He’d already taken enough to change him. A single drop was enough and he’d had more than that already. He drank until the first cramps rippled across his stomach, then broke his mouth away and tried to shove Sam off. Sam growled with his teeth still in Dean’s shoulder, working his hips against his ass and held him down. The sound vibrated down Dean’s spine like a light electric shock and he gasped.

“Sam, stop,” Dean said, panting. He reached back and pushed at Sam’s side, trying to get him to let go. His heart was beating fast, _too_ fast, trying to circulate his dwindling blood supply through his tired body. It burned and as Sam sucked, drawing it from him, he could feel it sliding through his veins like sandpaper and glass. “ _Sam_ …’

Sam made a low sound in his throat to show that he’d heard him, drew one last time, and pulled his teeth out. He licked over the wounds in Dean’s shoulder, deep but already beginning to heal from his saliva, and hunched his shoulders as he thrust again. Dean’s fingers spasmed on his side and Sam chuckled with his mouth pressed to his shoulders at the base of his spine. He licked there as pleasure pulsed in his belly, spreading out slowly in time to the thick beats of his heart. His heart that beat with stolen blood. Sam grazed his teeth over the spot and Dean shivered, then Sam nipped the little raised area there as he came. He moaned and licked over it, making the flesh pink with irritation, breath hitching in soft puffs against Dean’s back as his orgasm slid through him deep and slow. He felt Dean shudder against his stomach and chest and nuzzled him, breathing in the musk scent of his clean sweat and the smell of cheap motel shampoo.

“Hurts,” Dean said roughly. He pushed at Sam again and this time Sam withdrew from his body and moved off.

Dean rolled onto his back and lay there with his eyes closed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Sam watched him through his tumbled, damp hair and frowned in concern when he gasped and jerked against the bed. He ran a hand down Dean’s arm, felt the skin under his fingertips tremble and propped himself up on his elbows to look down at Dean’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

Dean shook his head and laughed dryly. “Changing, Sammy,” he whispered. “I’m _dying_.”

Sam ran his tongue over his teeth, tasted Dean’s blood still on his tongue and watched him uncertainly. “Oh. I forgot about that part.”

“How lucky… for you,” Dean managed.

“You’ll forget too,” Sam assured him.

Dean shook his head and gritted his teeth against the pain working through his stomach, up his chest. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears, feel it pounding on the back of his tongue. His lungs labored to draw in breath and then they just stopped. He opened his mouth to breathe and nothing happened. He made a dry coughing sound and scratched at his throat with his blunt fingernails, trying to breath. His body was changing, but he still needed the oxygen that his lungs could no longer supply.

Sam made soft soothing sounds in his throat and stroked the hair back from Dean’s face, his fingers lingering in the wet places by his temples. Dean’s eyes snapped open and he arched off the bed, mouth open and panting to get breath that never went any farther than the back of his throat. He reached out blindly and caught Sam’s hand, fingers closing around it hard enough to grind the little finger bones together. Sam felt it, but not as painfully as he would have if he were still human. If he were still human, it would have bruised him, it would have made him jerk his hand away and curse. Instead, he ducked his head and pressed his mouth to Dean’s knuckles, white and shaking as they closed over his hand and waited.

~~*~~

“Your friend stole our damn car,” Sam snapped, slamming the door as he walked back into the motel room. The little plaque on the door beneath the peep-hole with a map of the motel and its rooms rattled.

Dean looked up at him with blank, fevered eyes and shrugged. “We’ll just get it back.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He tossed something to Dean and though Dean was shaking, pale and biting down the urge vomit up his own stomach, he caught it, snatching it out of the air with animal-quick reflexes. “Eat that, you’ll feel better.”

Dean looked down at it and almost dropped the thing in disgust. It was a half-dead rat, fur greasy and patched, legs twitching feebly, blood beaded in its whiskers. “What is this?”

“Food,” Sam said simply. “Look, it tastes bad, really fucking bad, but it’s food. It’ll get you moving and make the shaking stop. Just… bite down and think of a Big Mac or something.”

Dead shuddered and lifted the rat toward his mouth. “Does that really work?”

Sam grinned. “No.”

Dean grimaced and drew his lips back as his new, sharp fangs descended. It was a strange feeling and one he would have to get used to, the way his teeth slid through his gums, laying over his human teeth like those of a shark. “Weird,” he mumbled, and sank his teeth into the side of the rat’s body.

It was like drinking raw sewage through a filter of matted, oily hair. Dean’s throat worked and he tried not to gag as he swallowed. The blood ran over his tongue and he could feel the little animal’s dwindling heartbeat against his teeth as the revolting stuff slid down his throat. It felt glutinous, sticking to his throat and tongue as he swallowed it, the flavor lingering in his mouth after he swallowed.

“Jesus christ,” Dean said, gagging as he tossed the drained rat carcass aside. He staggered to his feet and hurried to the bathroom, hitting his shoulder on the door to push it open, then collapsing over the sink, taking deep breaths and desperately trying not to throw up. He didn’t even want to imagine what the rat blood would taste like coming back up.

“Don’t puke, man,” Sam said, leaning in the doorway. “That’s the only thing I could find and you need it. Try not to puke.”

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” Dean snapped. He gagged, shook his head, and made himself swallow. When he came out of the bathroom, Sam was sitting at the table, looking at the map that Dean and Gordon had been studying when Sam got there. “I think it’ll keep,” he muttered, running a hand over the back of his neck. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out where the nest is,” Sam said, chewing his bottom lip thoughtfully as he traced his finger over lines on the map. “I was knocked out, but I remember the bridge. It shook the van or whatever the hell that jerk, Eli was driving. There was a light panning… I think he turned.”

“Which way?” Dean said, coming over to look at the map over Sam’s shoulder.

“Left… I think,” Sam said. He frowned and looked up at Dean. “Feel any better?”

Dean snorted and shook his head. “Not really,” he said. He reached over the map to snatch his cigarettes off the table, lit one and sat on the edge of the bed to put his shoes on. The first drag tasted fine, but the second one burned down his throat making Dean cough and take it out of his mouth. He scowled at Sam over the glowing tip. “If this blood-sucking thing has taken this away from me too, so help me, Sammy—”

Sam snorted, folded the map, and got up. “Uh-huh. I’m gonna go find us a car.”

“I want _my_ car,” Dean said, reaching over to crush his newly lit cigarette out in the ashtray on the nightstand.

“Yeah, we’ll get it,” Sam said. “I think I know where your pal, Gordon went with it.”

“Dick stole my car,” Dean grumbled, tying his boot with a hard jerk. “He’s not my pal.”

~~*~~

“We’re lost,” Dean said. He glanced at Sam in the passenger seat. “You got us lost,” he accused. “You don’t know where the hell we’re even going, do you?”

Sam ran his finger along a line on the map. “Turn onto the road just ahead,” he said.

“I thought you were blindfolded and unconscious,” Dean said. “How do you know where to turn?”

“Just do it, okay?” Sam said. “If we’re lost, then we are, but what have we honestly got to lose? Turn, you’re going to miss the road.”

“I see it,” Dean said irritably, turning and spraying gravel under the car’s tires as he almost drove past it.

Sam folded the map and sat up straight to look out the windshield. “I think it’s around here somewhere…”

“Around here somewhere,” Dean repeated. “That’s great, Sammy. We’ll just spread out and search the area in a ten mile radius. That should only take us until… oh, morning. When the sun comes up and we turn into crispy critters!”

“We don’t have to do that,” Sam said. He glanced at Dean and quirked a brow. “‘Crispy critters’?” he asked, amused.

“Shut up,” Dean muttered.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, the car vibrating lightly over the gravel of the dirt road. It was a soothing sensation, something that would be easy to fall asleep to.

Dean was about to accuse Sam again of getting them lost when Sam tensed beside him. “Stop, there it is,” Sam said. He narrowed his eyes and peered at the house, half hidden behind trees and flowering bushes. “I think.”

“You _think_?” Dean said. He pulled the car over and dimmed the lights as he parked it. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, I think this is it,” Sam said and got out of the car.

“Wait,” Dean said and reached over the front seat into the back to get his gun. He got out of the car and followed quickly after Sam who, he noted with irritation, had _not_ waited. “I said wait,” he hissed as he followed Sam up the doorsteps.

Sam shrugged and stopped by the closed front door to cock his head and listen. At first he couldn’t hear anything beyond most human perception; the chirping of crickets, the sigh of the wind over the un-mowed grass, the papery flap of leaves, the creak of old wood under Dean’s boots as he tried to be quiet and moved to stand on the other side of the door from Sam. Then, very distantly, he heard voices—or rather, one voice—but couldn’t make out what was being said through the thick walls and the rooms between them. It was a male voice, he could tell that—Gordon Walker’s voice—and he did make out the word’s “ _Dead man’s blood_ ”, but that was all.

Sam looked over at Dean and mouthed, “Dead man’s blood.” at him with a worried frown and crease of his brows.

Dean grimaced at those three words and lifted his hand to his index finger across his throat in the universal gesture signifying death as the grimace deepened into a scowl at the knowledge of what the meant for he and Sam, now, too.

“Oh yeah,” Sam whispered, frowning as he caught on, having forgotten that himself for a second.

Dean reached over, grabbed the back of Sam’s neck and pulled him over to press his mouth to his ear. “That’s for us now, too,” he whispered, just for safety’s sake. “So be careful.”

“Okay,” Sam said, easing out of Dean’s grasp. “Got it.”

Dean nodded and dropped his hand to his gun to pull back the slide. He gritted his teeth, the hair on the back of his neck standing up as metal slid against metal with a sharp _snick_ that sounded much too loud to his new ears to go unnoticed. “Remind me now, why are we going in here? My car… should be around here somewhere. We could just take it back and—”

“Because Gordon’s in there and no way that guy is just hanging out in a house that’s being used as a vampire nest. He’s got someone and he’s probably hurting them and well…” Sam tilted his head and jerked a shoulder. “We’re decent people… vampires… whatever. And um… protecting people… things… is what we do?”

Dean pursed his lips and gave Sam a patient look. “Uh-huh.” Dean carefully opened the door and went inside, Sam following close behind him. “Try to act… normal,” he whispered to Sam. “You know, human? Gordon doesn’t know yet and that might be a good thing.”

“He might know,” Sam said. “He was in the room, he had to leave and he might have heard us arguing in the parking lot.”

“Shit,” Dean hissed. “Alright, so we’ll pretend he doesn’t then and act human anyway.”

“Because…?” Sam said.

“Because maybe he _doesn’t_ know,” Dean said.

“Right. That makes perfect sense,” Sam said.

They both froze as a woman’s scream crashed through the house, followed by Gordon’s pleased laughter. Recognizing the voice, even under the touch of animalistic pain and fear running through it, Sam walked by Dean.

“Sam!” Dean whispered urgently, following after him with his gun drawn. “Sam, goddamn it, stop!”

Sam ignored him and threw the door open when they reached it hard enough to make it crash against the opposite wall.

“Yeah, that’s _real_ subtle, Sammy,” Dean muttered, coming up behind him.

“Sam, Dean,” Gordon said, looking up from the bloody blade he had pressed to Lenore’s collar bone. “Good of you to join me.”

“Let her go,” Sam said, taking a step forward before Dean caught his arm and stopped him.

“ _Normal_ , Sammy,” Dean reminded him softly. “Be cool.”

Gordon grinned at them and moved behind the chair he had Lenore tied up to, running the blade of his knife across her collarbones as he did. She gasped as her flesh purpled along the path of the cut like a bruise, discoloring in snaking lines through her veins as the poison of the dead man’s blood mixed with her own. Sam took another step forward and Gordon smiled at them over her shoulder, pressing the tip of the blade to Lenore’s throat.

“Ah-ah, I don’t think so,” Gordon said. “It’s a real shame the Winchester boys both turned into nasty fangs. No better than the things they used to hunt. Ironic, really.” He laughed and cut the side of Lenore’s cheek. Her eyes flew wide with pain and she shivered, arching against her restraints with a scream.

“Let her go,” Sam said again, grinding the words out through clenched teeth. He looked at Dean over his shoulder, then down at his hand on his arm. “Let _me_ go.”

Dean shook his head and tightened his grip as he shifted a little to put himself in front of Sam and pointed his gun at Gordon. “Let her go,” he barked. “Now.”

Gordon looked down the barrel of his gun and laughed. “Or what? You’ll shoot me?” He shook his head and chuckled softly, his dark eyes taunting them both. “She’s nothing but a monster, you of all people should understand that. I _thought_ you understood that.”

“They aren’t killing people, so it’s not your problem or ours,” Dean said. “Let her go.”

“They’re all the same,” Gordon said. “ _You_ are all the same. Evil, monstrous, blood-sucking—”

“You are starting to get on my damn nerves,” Dean said. He gestured with his gun for Gordon to step away from Lenore. “Get away from her or I’ll fucking shoot you.”

“Dean Winchester, threatening to kill a hunter to save a vampire,” Gordon said, standing up and backing a little away. He clucked his tongue against the back of his teeth and shook his head. “Your father would be so proud, wouldn’t he?”

Dean frowned and his hand tightened on Sam’s arm. Sam shook him off, giving him a look of concern. “Dean?”

“You shut up about our dad,” Dean snapped at Gordon. “And put the knife down.”

Gordon ignored the order and turned his blade to watch the moonlight shine on it through the drying blood. “Now, the honorable thing for you to do would be to walk into the sun, don’t you think? A hunter turned monster… that just seems like the moral… _noble_ thing to do. Rather than become one of _them_.”

He jabbed his knife in Lenore’s direction and Sam started to walk around the table toward her, watching Gordon warily with quick flicking glances. When Gordon tensed like he was going to attack Sam, Dean moved closer to him and once again gestured him back with the barrel of his gun.

Gordon smiled and held his hands out to the sides, showing that he was harmless. The red crusted knife still clutched in one hand crushed the illusion completely and made Dean snort in amusement.

“Get her out of here, Sam,” Dean said, not taking his eyes off of Gordon as Sam lifted Lenore into his arms.

Gordon suddenly jerked his arm to the side and nicked the back of Sam’s hand with the tip of his knife. Sam made a startled sound in his throat and almost dropped Lenore’s limp body as the poison rushed through him. His hand felt on fire, then so cold that it burned, before it started to go numb. He growled at Gordon and hefted Lenore’s weight again, trying to ignore the sensation.

“Sammy, you alright?” Dean asked. Gordon started to move toward him again and Dean bared his teeth at him and growled. “Get back over there,” he hissed, pointing him away from Sam.

Sam panted a few times as his hand twitched and the muscles in his arm spasmed. He shifted Lenore in his arms again and walked by Dean toward the door. “Shoot him,” he said calmly as he passed.

Dean’s eyes sharpened on Gordon and he started to walk toward him slowly. “Seems kind of like a waste to me,” Dean murmured, watching the way Gordon’s blood pulsed against the skin of his throat, his heartbeat quickening with instinctive fear as Dean drew near. “Like throwing prime sirloin in the trash.”

“I thought you fangs only ate cow blood,” Gordon said, trying to sound arrogant and only sounding more afraid when his voice cracked.

Dean laughed a little and ran his tongue over his human teeth as his sharp fangs slid down over them. “Oh, _they_ do, but I tell you something, Gordon; I’ve tasted animal blood and I think if I have a choice between doing that again and being labeled “ _evil_ ” by an asshole like you, I’ll suck on a human neck instead and cut my losses.”

Gordon slanted his eyes to the right then the left, seeking a way out as Dean closed in on him. “Wait,” he said and held up a hand.

Dean halted and tilted his head a little to the side. “What for?”

“Look, man, just put the gun down and I’ll put my knife down and we can both just walk out of here, alright?” Gordon said. “No harm done.”

Dean smiled slowly. “You know, Sammy told me to shoot you,” he mused. “And something about Sammy that a lot of people don’t know and would never guess… If Sammy wants it, I mean _really_ wants it, I hardly ever say no.”

“What the hell does that have to do with—?”

Dean shot Gordon’s left kneecap out and watched dispassionately as he hit the floor, a silent scream pulling at his mouth as his throat worked to form the sound. Dean kicked Gordon’s hand and the knife with the dead man’s blood on it skittered across the floor, thumping harmlessly into the wall.

“Everything,” Dean said, returning his gun to its place tucked under his waistband as he knelt over Gordon. He drew his lips back from his fangs and watched with a little predatory thrill as Gordon’s eyes widened and he tried to crawl backward across the floor, reaching out for his knife. Dean grabbed his leg and jerked him back. “No you don’t,” he said, shaking his head.

“Please,” Gordon whispered. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Dean asked.

“You… you know,” Gordon said. “Don’t kill me. Not like this.”

Dean laughed softly and leaned down, inhaling the scent of the other man’s frightened, adrenaline-laced blood. “Who said anything about killing you?” he whispered.

~~*~~

Sam gave Lenore some of his blood and sat with her until she stopped shivering and moaning and began to relax into still unconsciousness. He stroked his fingers through her hair, rocking gently, her head resting on his thigh as he petted her hair and watched her.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice rough, dry and very small. “You should hate me. I don’t know why you don’t, but… thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Sam said. He brushed his fingers down one of her pale, cold cheeks and gently slid her off his lap to lay on the seat of the car. “You’ll be alright now.”

She clutched at his arms and Sam paused, making soft, calming shushing noises. “I’ll be right back. I have to go get Dean. Make sure he’s okay. Just close your eyes and try to sleep.”

“The sun’s going to come up soon,” Lenore murmured with a sigh. “I haven’t seen the sunrise in… a long time.”

“Don’t worry,” Sam assured her. “We’ll be gone and safe before then.”

Lenore made an amused sound in her throat and shifted, her eyes sliding closed. “Maybe I’ll watch this one.”

“Don’t…” Sam glanced anxiously between Lenore and the house. Dean was still in there. That could mean a lot of things, most of them not very good, but what Lenore was talking about amounted to suicide. “Don’t do that,” Sam said. He traced his fingertips over the full swell of her mouth and frowned when she licked them with something that sounded a lot like a cat’s purr. “Stay here, okay?” Sam said. “I’m gonna get Dean, then we’ll leave. Just… don’t go into the sun.”

“You’re sweet,” Lenore said tiredly. “You’ll come back before the sun comes up. You’ll burn just like me if you don’t. No, Sammy, I won’t go into the sun. Not today.”

“Good,” Sam said, relieved. “That’s good. I’ll… be right back.”

He closed the car door carefully and ran back to the house, taking the front steps two at a time. “Dean? Are you okay? We have to go before…”

Sam trailed off as he walked into the room where they’d found Gordon torturing Lenore and found Dean crouched beside the table with Gordon’s limp form draped sideways over it. Blood pooled, thick black-red, over the table and ran down to the floor like a velvet drape. Gordon was covered in it, his dark skin gleaming wetly in the moonlight through the window. As Sam watched, Dean ran his tongue through a deep wound on the inside of Gordon’s elbow and blood gushed from it across his lips.

Without a word, Sam crossed to the table to lean down over Dean’s shoulder and lick the blood from his mouth. On the table, Gordon made a soft, pitiful sound. A sound reserved for terrified children and dying predators-turned-prey. Dean dipped his fingers in the blood on the table and licked them clean one by one as Sam watched. When he repeated the process, Sam followed Dean’s hand with his eyes as he lifted it to his lips and leaned in to lick the backs of his fingers while Dean sucked the tips.

“We have to go,” Sam said, running his tongue over his lips to catch the last traces of blood beaded there. “The sun’s going to come up soon.”

Dean half turned and licked Sam’s mouth with his tongue, leaving a smear of blood across his bottom lip. Sam lifted a hand and tangled his fingers in the back of Dean’s hair, pulling his mouth firmly against his own with a growl. They licked inside each other’s mouths, stroking the blood in Dean’s mouth over their tongues, both of them growling now as base hunger was forgotten and they reached for each other.

Sam pressed Dean back against the table until his hip was grinding against the wood and Gordon’s blood slid down the leg of his jeans, making the denim stick to his skin. He pushed his hands under the back of Dean’s coat, under his shirt, blunt nails grazing over familiar, smooth flesh. “Want to push you back on this table and fuck you with blood on your skin like paint,” Sam said.

Dean fisted his hands in Sam’s long hair and pulled his mouth back to his, nipping his lips. “Then do it,” he said.

Sam shook his head and pushed himself away from Dean’s body with a groan. “Can’t,” he panted. “Want to, but I can’t. We have to go.”

Dean ran a hand through his hair and made a low sound of frustration in his throat, then nodded. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “Shit. Okay, come on then. Wait, my car keys.”

He felt around in Gordon’s pockets and found them in his right one. Turning them on the ring on his finger, he followed Sam out of the house. “How does she know when the sun’s coming up?” he asked Sam, glancing in the back at Lenore.

“Hell if I know,” Sam said. “Maybe it’s some kind of vampire sixth sense.”

Dean shrugged, started the car, and turned it back the way they had come. “Maybe she has a watch,” he said.

Sam snorted.

“Well, she could have a watch,” Dean said reasonably. “Makes more sense than some kind of… whatever.”

“Do you want me to look and see if she has a watch?” Sam asked, humoring him.

“No,” Dean said. “It was just a… forget it.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes then Sam said, “What happens now?”

Dean looked at him and lifted a brow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we can’t really be hunters, can we?” Sam said. “Not anymore. Not if they’re going to be hunting _us_ now.”

“I… never really thought about it,” Dean said.

“We haven’t really had much time _to_ think about it,” Sam said. “Maybe we should.”

Dean scowled, watching the road without really seeing it. “It doesn’t really change anything,” he said after a while.

Sam blinked at him. “It… Dean, we’re _vampires_ now.”

Dean laughed humorlessly. “You think I somehow failed to notice this, Sammy? Gordon laid out on the kitchen table, his blood in my mouth and all these… hungers in me, and I still don’t get it? I get it. We’re vampires now. So what?”

“So… we can’t—”

“Why not?” Dean persisted. “Aren’t you the one who was just going on and on to me about how there is no black and white line between good and evil? That there aren’t just bad things and good people?”

Sam chewed his bottom lip and glanced between Dean and the road outside his window. “Yeah.”

“So we’ll just go back to the motel until dark, then…” Dean trailed off thoughtfully. He drove over the bridge and Lenore stirred in the back seat.

“Then?” Sam prodded.

“Then we’ll figure it out, I guess,” Dean said. “I don’t know, Sam. Just because everything isn’t good or evil, like you say, doesn’t mean it goes away either, right? I mean there _are_ still bad things out there.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He sat down lower in his seat and stared out the windshield. “Dean?”

“Huh?” Dean said absently. He was sitting up in his seat, looking both ways at the traffic and waiting for his chance to turn into the parking lot of their motel.

“I’m sorry I bit you,” Sam said quietly.

Dean looked at him and blinked. A blaring horn behind them startled him and he jerked his attention back to the road and made the turn. He parked the car and turned to look at Sam, his brow furrowed in concern. “Sam?”

Sam shrugged and started to open his door and get out. He paused and looked over the back of his seat at Lenore, who was sleeping or passed out, he couldn’t tell which and pushed his door open to get out. She could have his bed, he decided. He’d sleep next to Dean or take the floor.

“No, wait, Sam,” Dean said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. Sam looked back at him uneasily and Dean sighed. “I’m not.”

“What?” Sam said.

“I’m not sorry,” Dean repeated. “That you bit me.” He let go of Sam’s arm and got out of the car. “Just don’t let it happen again. Now come on, the sun’s coming up.”

 

  
**XXX**   



End file.
